Zicasso

Lets you plan detailed vacations. Offers service and personalization you won't find from most bargain travel sites. Allows you to choose from several travel itineraries offered by up to four travel agencies.

Cons
Expect to go through several follow-up e-mails asking you to clarify your trip request, and to wait a week or more to receive your first completed travel itinerary. You may receive itineraries through your Zicasso inbox instead of nicer looking My Trips page.

Bottom Line

Zicasso comes in handy when you're looking for more out of your vacation than just a flight and hotel. This free service puts you in contact with a prequalified network of travel agencies bidding to plan your dream vacation according to your personal needs.

With spring upon us and summer right around the corner, you might already find yourself daydreaming about sandy white beaches and exotic locales. The Internet can make traveling easythat is, if you have only one location and a simple vacation itinerary in mind. Trying to hash out a more involved vacation online, with multiple destinations or other special accommodations, can be a pain. Zicasso is the free service that aims to take the hassle out of your travel planning. The service combines online convenience with the off-line personalization you would get from a travel agency, letting you plan trips at a surprising level of detail.

If I'm planning a weekend in Vegas, I just hop online, find the cheapest flight and hotel, and I'm on my way. If I'm planning a ten-day excursion to Thailand, however, I'd want the personalization and expertise of a travel agency to make sure I'd get the most out of my vacation. But finding access to that kind of expertise isn't as easy as booking everything online from home. That's where Zicasso comes in: It brings the personalization of a professional travel agency to a simple online service.

Unlike Travelocity or Orbitz, Zicasso isn't a bargain travel site. The service is meant chiefly for enthusiastic travelers looking to plan the perfect adventure, not value shoppers hoping to find the best deal on flights and hotels. It's something like LendingTree but for travel. The service promises to put you in contact with a network of over 100 travel companies, located in over 40 countries, that bid for your business, letting you choose from several proposed travel itineraries crafted specifically to your needs. You don't pay a dime for using the service, but Zicasso does take a commission from every trip booked through its site.

The process is pretty straightforward. Fill out a trip request form and submit it to Zicasso, and you'll soon get up to four day-by-day detailed travel itineraries from agencies competing for your business. Then you compare itineraries and choose the one you like best.

Zicasso's trip request form is nicely designed, offering enough structure to guide you through important travel decisions, yet provides enough flexibility to cater to your personal taste. First you decide on the basic stuff, like destination, departure date, and number of people in your party. Then you specify what services you want agencies to handle for you, such as booking connecting flights, hiring a personal driver, or buying tickets to special events.

The next page gets into the nitty-gritty of your vacation. Here, you tell agencies everything from what kind of hotel you want to stay in to what kind of cultural, outdoor, and leisure activities you want to participate in on your trip. Zicasso also provides text boxes so that you can make specific requests not explicitly covered by the rest of the form. This is a nice touch that helps agencies design a vacation specifically for you instead of just returning the typical touristy trip. For instance, if I'm planning a trip to Paris, I could let travel agencies know I want to experience the best bars, cuisine, and shopping France has to offer but that I have no interest in visiting the Eiffel Tower.

Zicasso originally promised that users would receive itineraries within two business days. But due to an unexpected surge of users since the site's official launch, Zicasso now tells users that it may take a week or more to receive itineraries. Also, Zicasso may still e-mail you for additional information before it puts you in contact with travel agencies, delaying the process even further. I requested a trip to Italy and received a partial itinerary in two business days, along with a request for additional information, and a full itinerary in two business days after that. That's fair enough because, as I said, Zicasso isn't a bargain site, and if you're planning a full-priced trip, you probably ought to making arrangements a bit in advance, too.Next: My Zicasso Itinerary

Errol Pierre-Louis first came to PCMag as an editorial intern in 2006. After graduating from Georgetown University with a B.A. in English he joined the Software Team as a full-time Reviews Producer. Today he is...

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